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How-to work with global parameters in Azure CLI

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When you work with the Azure CLI reference commands, there are arguments that are available for most commands. These arguments are called "global parameters," as they're common to almost all Azure CLI reference commands.

--help global parameter

To get information about a reference group or command, use the --help global parameter. The --help parameter displays Azure CLI reference information in your console including available subgroup and parameter lists.

az group create --name myResourceGroup --location eastus --help

The following console output shown here has fields omitted for brevity:

Command
    az group create : Create a new resource group.

Arguments
    --location -l                 [Required] : Location. Values from: `az account list-locations`.
                                               You can configure the default location using `az
                                               configure --defaults location=<location>`.
    --name --resource-group -g -n [Required] : Name of the new resource group.
    --managed-by                             : The ID of the resource that manages this resource
                                               group.
    --tags                                   : Space-separated tags: key[=value] [key[=value] ...].
                                               Use "" to clear existing tags.

Global Arguments
    --debug                                  : Increase logging verbosity to show all debug logs.
    --help -h                                : Show this help message and exit.
    --only-show-errors                       : Only show errors, suppressing warnings.

Examples
    Create a new resource group in the West US region.
        az group create -l westus -n MyResourceGroup

--verbose global parameter

Learn more in-depth details about logging by adding the --verbose global parameter to your reference command. Verbose output is helpful when trying to understand why certain commands take longer than others to execute.

az group create --name myResourceGroup --location eastus --verbose

The following console output shown here has fields omitted for brevity, but note the additional information on the execution time.

{...}
Command ran in 1.413 seconds (init: 0.487, invoke: 0.926)

--debug global parameter

If the extra details from the --verbose parameter aren't enough and you wish to view the entire log, use the --debug global parameter. Also provide the output generated with --debug when submitting a bug report.

az group create --name myrResourceGroup --location eastus --debug

The following console output shown here has fields omitted for brevity:


cli.knack.cli: Command arguments: ['group', 'create', '--name', 'myResourceGroup', '--location', 'eastus', '--debug']
cli.knack.cli: __init__ debug log:
[...]
cli.knack.cli: Event: CommandInvoker.OnTransformResult [<function _resource_group_transform at 0x000001D9B72123B0>, <function _x509_from_base64_to_hex_transform at 0x000001D9B7212440>]
cli.knack.cli: Event: CommandInvoker.OnFilterResult []
{...}
[...]
telemetry.process: Return from creating process
telemetry.main: Finish creating telemetry upload process.

--only-show-errors global parameter

During the process of debugging, remove the warnings returned by a reference command by using the --only-show-errors global parameter.

az interactive

Output console:

**This command is in preview and under development. Reference and support levels: https://aka.ms/CLI_refstatus**

Any comments or concerns? You can use the 'feedback' command! We would greatly appreciate it.

A new Recommender is added which can make the completion ability more intelligent and provide the scenario completion!
If you want to disable this feature, you can use 'az config set interactive.enable_recommender=False' to disable it.

A command preload mechanism was added to prevent lagging and command run errors.
You can skip preloading in a single pass by CTRL+C or turn it off by setting 'az config set interactive.enable_preloading=False'

Loading command table... Expected time around 1 minute.

--subscription global parameter

You can use the --subscription global parameter to set a specific subscription for a command. The following example changes the active subscription using the subscription ID:

az account set --subscription "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"

--output global parameter

To show the output of a command in a specific format, specify the --output global parameter. In this example, the output is shown as a table:

Note

The accepted values for output are: json, jsonc, none, table, tsv, yaml, and yamlc. The default output value is json.

az vm list --resource-group myResourceGroup --output table

Output console:

Name    ResourceGroup    Location
------  ---------------  ----------
myVm    myResourceGroup  eastus

To learn more about the different output formats, see Output formats for Azure CLI commands.

--query global parameter

There are times the output console might display extensive amounts of information that you need to filter through. To do so, use the --query global parameter to execute a JMESPath query on the results of commands. JMESPath is a query language for JSON, which gives you the ability to select and modify data from Azure CLI output.

This example returns the SSH public keys authorized to connect to the virtual machine by adding --query:

 az vm show --resource-group myResourceGroup --name myVm --query "osProfile.linuxConfigurat
ion.ssh.publicKeys"

Output console:

[
  {
    "keyData": "ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQC7WbiMEsB0iwdGPjeGXs3UWFtzbCkUwtIxzkIOpEtlqkLGa0XQdvwhzok6szq6Ycx/f4cfid/yrmBPtzmxdQnGeCy2FOcVIzp+SkjIUg/Ez2YyDcMb60u66QUmHPRyhipJ/PDZROt6O0092qfTkTjB+7hLRiZzV2raLjiQ95eV0AXUP+Gsvdo/7ytqWNIm3iQTWbQ/GwSg+p0v+kmZELIbrxo845dambSpgBL8g0wCUZaptru3ZHo9m0UWbFPASVJKauhfPCSVPQCaOCaAdB01Ih8QDVRCazT+jyV6GgTwUIXVQthVBbt56ibhuSUdf0cWF8IVncjH+WXexVAhQw0j",
    "path": "/home/yourName/.ssh/authorized_keys"
  }
]

To learn more about querying command output, see How to query Azure CLI command output using a JMESPath query.

See also